Monthly Archives: August 2011

Rounding the Bend

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Last week we executed an experiment to begin to answer our new question: what is the relationship between nutrient concentration and uptake rate?  As I explained in my last blog, we filled bladders with four different nutrient concentrations and deployed them at mid-estuary and lower-estuary marshes.  My main task for the week was to be in charge of lab prep.  Artificial sea water needed to be made, bladders needed to be filled, field supplies needed to be organized, nutrient samples needed to be taken, and so on.  Besides being rather mundane and times, I enjoy being in the lab.  As I have expressed before, field work tends to stress me out because there are so many variables.  In the lab I have much more control over things.  I also have lots of time to think and brainstorm about my life outside of EPA including grad school and other post undergrad opportunities.  Often times I have to pause what I’m doing to write things down so I don’t forget! 

One of the main difficulties of working on this project is that it involves a lot of man power as well as several different people taking charge of various aspects of the experiment.  This can lead to problems because every part of the project needs to come together perfectly which sometimes does not happen due to lack of communication.  Unfortunately, this was a rather large problem with our deployment last week.  The tides were rather high, so we decided to deploy our chambers on low marsh benches.   We do know at what tide elevation that a particular marsh floods, but we do not know elevations of all of the low marsh benches in the marsh itself.  So, we decided to estimate, and our estimate happened to be rather off.  On Monday, the chambers were deployed at Winant Marsh in mid-estuary.  Using our calculations, we decided to add 10L of water to the bladders which will flood the chambers about two-thirds of the way.  Upon Caitlin’s, return from deploying the chambers, she realized that she forgot to leave out the high tide sample bottle, so she and Stephanie went out to the marsh during high tide to collect a sample.  When they got there, they were shocked to see that the tide was almost over topping the chambers – way higher than we thought it would go.  This can cause problems because it can result in a pressure difference inside and outside the chambers which may lead to leakage.  Leakage, especially from natural sea water infiltrating with our artificial sea water, can render our results useless. 

Where did the marsh go? The tide almost completely flooded our chambers.

That day, there was discussion and disagreement over how much water to add to the bladders for the subsequent day’s deployment.  This is where several people thinking different things about the same project can lead to issues.  Caitlin and I knew (or thought) that the low marsh bench at Hatfield flooded higher than it did at Winant.  So we thought that our bladders for that deployment deserved little or no extra water.  Ted on the other hand wanted to add 5L just to be safe.  The problem with adding too much water is that it can greatly dilute the water that enters the chambers making it difficult to extrapolate out what the exact uptake rate actually is.  I’m getting carried away… haha.  Anyway in the end, we only added an extra 2L to each bladder because we realized that we didn’t have enough artificial sea water to add 5L and Jody found extra low sites to deploy the

I did get to go out in the field for a bit on Wednesday. I was enjoying being out in the sun!

chambers at (lower than our calculations were for).  Again the tide came up really high and we didn’t have enough water as was needed leading to possible infiltration.  The next day we made sure to add extra water and we found higher elevation sites, so we ended up having too much water!  Ugh!  It’s so difficult to get it just perfect. 

After taking our salinity measurements and finding the final volumes, we compared our results to our initial measurements to see if they matched up (they should be the same if no water was gained or lost during the deployment).  We found that a couple bladders may have had external leakage, but it is not as bad as it could have been.  Hopefully we will have some usable data from UC Santa Barbara in a few weeks.   

This week will be spent preparing for my presentations on Thursday and Friday as well as analyzing data.  I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that this internship is almost over.  I just hope that I can find a place to live before I move back to Hawaii!

Please feel free to read and enjoy my personal blog to learn about my summer outside of the EPA here: sarasoregonadventure.blogspot.com

Sea_Gil’s Blog Pt.8

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While the past week was spent adding a number of new species to the spawning period spreadsheet, a good chunk of my time was dedicated to working on my powerpoint for the symposium. My mentor is not going to be in this week, so I wanted to get a rough draft prepared for him to look over. I ended up giving a practice presentation for him and two other EPA colleagues on Thursday. After I went through the whole presentation, we then went back over each individual slide and discussed any changes to be made. There were quite a few suggestions, but I am glad for the constructive criticism because I would like for this presentation to be good.

On Wednesday, I headed up to Corvallis with Betty and Diego to see them (along with Becca and Chris) play at Bombs Away! Hats off to them for a good show!

Friday was the day  I finally got to go out into the field! On a HOVERCRAFT! It was totally awesome! I’d seen a hovercraft going around when I was in Turks & Caicos and it looked pretty cool. I never thought I would actually get to ride in one. I went out with another intern and an EPA worker to help them with collecting some cores in mud flats. Needless to say, I got a bit muddy. Also, I had my first experience with these contraptions called Mudders. They’re these types of “shoes” that are designed to keep you from sinking into the mud. It was weird walking around in them, but I was glad for them because the intern, Rachel, told me she had gotten stuck in the mud a few times on earlier trips when she didn’t have them on. She said she had to be dug out because she couldn’t lift her legs from the mud!

So that was my work week. My weekend was very fun. Betty, Diego, and I went to Zumba on Friday. A bunch of Hatfield interns then invited us to watch a movie called The Abyss. I confused it with some other movie about people getting stuck in a cave. This one was about divers getting stuck deep in the sea and meeting some interesting, new friends while down there

Betty and I went to the Yaquina Head Lighthouse on Saturday. I always see it in the distance when walking along the jetty, so I wanted to check it out. Also, I wanted to take some pictures for my grandma because she really likes lighthouses (just emailed her some photos!). We parked outside of the actual park and took a nice walk up there. We didn’t get to go inside because there was a long wait, but it was still nice to just see it.

lighthouse

Yaquina Head Lighthouse

For dinner, we got to go to BBQ in Siletz at the HMSC director’s house. There was a lot of great food, since it was a potluck. At this point, I’m mostly used to microwaved veggie burgers and tomato soup, so it was nice change. That night, we went out to Nana’s where there was a band playing. After Nana’s, we headed over to Moby Dick’s for some karaoke which is always fun!

This week will be filled with more slideshow preparation since the Symposium is on Thursday. Hopefully my presentation goes well!

Oh and I’d like to give an early birthday shout-out to Betty! Wooohooooo!

This Time For Real… Guided

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So now I’m following Eric Dickey on Twitter… my life is not the same. And after a failed attempt at a picture blog last week, This week, I will retain to my phone, and take daily pictures.

Monday, I worked at the VC (still waiting on this dang poster to be put up!). Fixed up one of the deep sea vents exhibits!

I fixed this display with my hands

Later that day, I went practice for my gig at Bombs Away with my VC friends Chris and Becca (Betty joined later on), where we played some music in their awesome basement with their awesome kitten called Cricket.

this is Cricket... the kitten

 

Tuesday, chasing around the graphic designer, but the poor woman is busier than most humans on this planet! So I did some work with my curriculum experiment, followed by more rehearsal! That night I cooked some spaghetti for the band.

Cajunrican Spaghetti

Wednesday, off at the VC… I woke up a bit late, ate some good breakfast, then played soccer with some Hatfield folk, then went to Toledo to rehearse… then… SHOWTIME! The New Toledo Family Band, composed by Chris, Becca, Ms. Mujica, and myself, rocked out the Bombs Away local until there were no more wet burritos around! Definitely one of the funnest shows I’ve ever played in my life. After the show, we stayed at one of our friends’ house in Corvallis.

Thursday, off at the VC once more, but not really! We woke up really early in Corvallis, and got to Newport at 8:45AM. I then started applying for D.O. school (Doctor of Osteopathy)! It is a long process but I’m definitely excited about it. I can’t believe they asked me for my SAT/ACT scores… I don’t know where to get those. I did go to the VC that afternoon because my POSTERS WERE DONE! Big thanks to Allison Walkingshaw, the graphic designer, for being awesome at this! Ehem… my poster has the FIRST QR code of any exhibit in the VC! Check it, try it with your smartphone!

QR Code to www.sealtag.org

This is only one of the two posters...

Friday, I worked. My main goal that day was to set up my prototype. It was harder than I thought. I had to move one exhibit in order to set mine up. This is a phenomenon called magical chairs. The exhibit I had to move was a hypoxia exhibit, which had a tank full of water and vegetable oil. Needless to say, I figured out a way to spill it on the floor. My own little oil spill. I had to mop about 5 times before the floor didn’t feel like a Wendy’s behind the counter.

So 6 hours later, I’m still there setting up the exhibit that doesn’t even belong to me! This is what it ended looking like:

 

Now it was time to set up my posters… With the help of Margaret and Betty, I present to you, my final prototype!

My final posters, all set up.

Saturday, I worked again. I did some assessments of the visitors that are lurking around the poster. In an assessment, you time visitors that look at your exhibit, and when one reads for more than 90 seconds, you interview them (if they want to). I had a few people talk to me, all very impressed with the panels, as well as by the fact that there are sea lions that are endangered (most people didn’t know that)! This is my exhibit from the side:

From the side... I am going to put two LHX tags and a sea lion skull and shoulderblade as attractants!

That afternoon was the HMSC volunteer/staff/intern BBQ at the HMSC director’s house!

A beautiful mansion in the middle of nowhere!

Note that this was a “potluck” event, to which we brought some beer (typical college students… o dang, I’m now a grad). But when we got there, we were shocked to see that there was a Harry Potter-style banquet because all of these older people (who are mostly retired or with jobs), had brought delicious food… Ahh, soo good…

Later on that night, we went to Moby Dick’s to sing karaoke. Here is one of my picks for the night.

by Al Greene

I gave it a shot. I couldn’t quite moan like Al Greene did. But I did damage control afterward with a great performance of Juanes’ “A Dios Le Pido”. You wouldn’t know this song unless you were Latino (which there were a few of us at the bar that night… a dedication to them).

Today, I’m still working. Gave an Estuary tour to a small group of people, which was nice because I didn’t have to scream. And now I’m working on my blog/presentation. Looking forward to doing more visitor assessments and getting a final product of my exhibit in November!

Saving Oysters in Oregon – week 8

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adventures with Half-and-Half

This week, I was studying how water flow is affected by the shape of oyster shells and larger oyster conglomerations.  I used a flume, which looks like this:

A propeller pushes the water through the flume, and laminators (not in this picture, sorry) that are placed right after the white tubing straightens the water flow through the clear plastic compartment.  The idea is to place an oyster or a clump of oysters into the center of the clear plastic portion, dispense a little bit of half-and-half into the flow, and videotape how its flow is affected!  Half-and-half makes a good indicator because it’s buoyant and thick.

 

Plastic walls and a room full of windows ensured that glare would be a constant foe, so we decided to block out almost all sources of light by making this:

 

It was a pretty cozy set-up.

That’s my half-and-half dispenser right there.  It exerts a tiny bit of pressure that pushes a small volume of half-and-half out of a curved glass pipette (I made it myself! glass-blowing skills, yeah!).

 

And you get something like this:

 

We used different shell combinations, different water velocities, and dispensed the half-and-half at different depths to see how water flow changes near the bottom of a shell, right at the center, or right above.  You can even go a little crazy and try to direct the flow through spaces between oysters and make the half-and-half corkscrew!

These are the different oyster formations we used:

 

Findings..

From the 96 videos we shot, we have learned that the shape of oyster shells or oyster clusters can ultimately slow down particles in the water by creating turbulence.  This can have implications for the benefits of arranging in clusters, by increasing rates of feeding and larval settlement.

 

next week…

preparing for my final Oregon Sea Grant scholar presentation on all my work I’ve done here!

Lots and lots of EMAILS!

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Hello again,

I apologize for my second late blog post. I always make a note to do it Monday morning, and then I get caught up with work and it all goes out the window!

Last week was a pretty productive week. I was able to meet with Sher Fenn of Central Web Services and get both the calendar and the news feed up and running. Now the home page of the “OSU Marine Sciences” website looks a lot like the Oregon State home page! On Wednesday (I believe), I attended a meeting with members of Oregon Sea Grant to discuss the current state of funding as well as other projects that are going on. It was fun to be able to see the Sea Grant people from Hatfield on screen during the meeting!

I met with Jenna after the meeting and we discussed what has been done so far, and what remains to be done. We decided that it might be a good idea to add an “Opportunities” tab to the website where we can include research programs offered here at the university (such as the program we are all a part of). I dedicated the rest of the week (as well as this week) to getting in touch with students to potentially feature in the “student researchers” section of the site.

I never knew that emailing could take so much time!!! I spent the end of last week and the beginning of this week just sending emails. I contacted faculty members from all of the colleges and departments represented within the Marine Council, as well as other university representatives to inquire about outstanding undergraduate and graduate students that would be worth featuring on the website. I have created template emails, but I still have at least 100 emails out that I get responses to on a daily basis. Once I get student names, I contact those students (using another template email), and get their information and feature pictures. As I receive this information, I upload it to the website. Sometimes I have had to make edits to students’ text (sometimes people are in a hurry), but for the most part I think this has been an efficient means of going about it. If I rewrite the text myself, I have to get it approved by the student, and more often than not they have a lot of edits for me anyway. I figure it is best not to mix up the details. I just received an email from a faculty member today encouraging me to take a peek at the Marine Biology Option blog posts. Today I plan to check that out and email some of the students that have posted.

As I wait for replies to my emails, I am working on several things. I have been uploading video transcripts to the site (accessibility rules require that transcripts be provided for all embedded videos). I will also be working on the “opportunities” tab mentioned above. When Jenna gets back, I plan to meet with her again to show her my progress. Hopefully I can get all of the student features done this week and be able to move on to the “Academics” tab next week.

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the sun (we haven’t gotten much sun yet this summer!)

Best of luck,

Shealyn

Finally some data!

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Sampling sea grass in Winant Marsh

Phew!  Last week was a well deserved break from all of the field work that I did the week before.  Oddly enough, I was excited for a few days of data entry and acid washing.  So Monday was spent doing just that.  Since I was finished with data entry on Monday, Tuesday I went back to Winant Marsh to help a coworker with sea grass biomass collection to follow up on the flume experiment.  Fortunately that didn’t take too long, so I was able to go back to the office and lab for the rest of the day.  Unfortunately, the processing part of the biomass collection was a bit of a pain.  Wednesday was spent counting and measuring shoots, and scraping blades of sea grass for epiphytes that are living on the plant.  This took all day long and was rather boring, so I was happy to be done with it.

The next day I learned that we received our data from UC Santa Barbara.  We found that we had some rather interesting data.  For a little background, back in April, we ran an experiment to see if changing the nutrient concentration in our artificial sea water affected the ability of the marsh plants to uptake these nutrients.  According to our ISUS data, which we now know is not reliable, this didn’t matter that much.   The UCSB data on the other hand, showed a vastly different uptake rate depending on the amount of nutrients that were given to the plant. This was not good news because from our ISUS data, we relied on the premise that the marsh plants could only take up a certain amount of nutrients at one time regardless of the concentration made available to them.  Alas, this is not the case, we now know that if you give the marsh more nutrient rich water it will compensate for that and increase the rate that it takes up the nutrients.  If this doesn’t through a curve ball in our experiment, I don’t know what does.  Analyzing in this data resulted in us revamping our whole experiment.  Now our new question is to determine what the maximum amount of nutrients that a marsh habitat can absorb as well as what the rate of uptake is depending on the concentration.

After this redirection, we designed an experiment to try to answer this question.  Our new experiment for this week is to deploy three sets of chambers at two locations along the marsh at three different low marsh sites.  We will have four chambers at each site with four different concentrations.  We are hoping that once we get our data back from UCSB, we will be able to roughly estimate an equation for the nutrient uptake rate dependent on concentration.  So, the end of last week was spent preparing for this experiment, while this week will be spent out in the field and in the lab making sure everything runs smoothly.  I feel like now that I’ve finally gotten the hang of things, I now have less than three weeks left.  Nevertheless, it has been a great experience so far and I have learned a lot!

Check out my personal blog to learn about my life outside of EPA here: sarasoregonadventure.blogspot.com

Picture Blog Fail…Guided

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This is (was) a Picture Blog!

This week, I decided to document my week with pictures and screenshots. Yes, I will put captions to describe what each picture means, as some will be screenshots of the documents I have been working on. So hold on tight.

  • Monday… workday! all I got was a screenshot

Monday... Panel content, emailing everybody in the world, and adjusted my timeline

You won’t believe what just happened… I lost my phone, retrieved it today, finding that all of my pictures disappeared. No more picture blog… sad sad sad day.

Tuesday, was a busy day. I finished my text content for the panels and started working with the Steller sea lion bones to find out how big this animal truly is. I am planning on putting these bones (part of them) on the final panel with the life history transmitter tag inside of it to show visitors how it works. I had pictures of this huge skeleton, but they are now in a technological black hole. I also met with the man who will produce the final product when I’m gone (unless somebody…im looking at you OSG… finds some more cash to keep this Puerto Rican around a bit longer). He was very nice and extremely experienced. He once built an entire exhibit by himself, without any previous plans or sketches… that’s art right there. We talked about some ideas for the panel, from which I made some sketches of, and am showing my graphic designer in the near future. That night, I headed out to Portland to hang out with Betty Mujica, and assist her through her endeavours (mainly of driving through roads with people inside of cars). We spent Wednesday in Seattle, where we went to the Pikes place market (again, pictures not available), and returned to Portland that night too late to find any good food, so we ended up eating Wendy’s (did I mention the same happened the night before, and we ate at the Shilo Inn Lounge?).

Thursday, we went to Portland to hang out, and I got a haircut, pizza and homemade cranberry soda from hot lips pizza, and gelatto. We had a very nice day and headed back that afternoon to Hatfield… aka: reality.

Friday, I worked at the VC by myself all day, in an effort to relieve my friends and fellow interns since they had important compromises elsewhere. It was, thankfully, a slow day. Where I worked on the curriculum, and obtained some cool sea lion pictures from Dr. Horning.

Saturday and Sunday were work days… Reaaally longgg workk days. Since I am done with my content for the exhibit, all I could do was wait for the graphic desginer for the poster, and in the meantime…more curriculum work and fixing exhibits left and right. I did go clamming with Betty and Margaret, from which a beautiful clam/spinach pasta was made…

This week, I expect to have something set up for the exhibit, in order to collect some data from the visitors. I will also be performing at Bombs Away on Wednesday, August 3rd… starting at 730PM!

See you there!

 

 

INTERVIEW WEEK!

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As promised, this post will mostly recount the trip I made to Portland and Seattle last week!

 

Monday- First thing I did on Monday was secure and rental car and hotel for my trip.  I decided to stay in Portland for 3 nights (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) just in case some of the contacts I hadn’t heard back from got in touch with me and I needed to schedule anything else.  After picking up the car at lunch time I made a few more calls and sent out some confirmation e-mails then headed to the apartment to pack.  I chose mostly business casual clothes, keeping in mind potential job opportunities.  After getting an audio book, I loaded up the car and headed out around 5 (just in time to beat Portland traffic).  I stayed at the Shilo Inn by the airport, as my first interview was AT the airport! Airports are my favorite places onearth because of the endless possibilities– they’re like a gateway to everywhere– needless to say I was excited to get the behind the scenes.

Tuesday- My meeting with two authorities at the Port of Portland was at 9am, so I made sure to show upearly (maybe a little too early) partly to calm my nerves and partly so if I got lost I’d have time to get found.  I got to tour the Port’s newly built office facility, which is beautiful, and then drove around the entire airport checking out the different cargo facilities.  I got the impression that while PDX isn’t the biggest airport, it has a lot of things going for it.  There is a lot of enthusiasm for growth projects at the airport and the expansion of the seafood export business is definitely one of them.  After the tour I was able to conduct an interview and get their

Cargo Plane at PDX!

thoughts on the direction of the industry and what they thought the Port’s biggest strengths and weaknesses were.  It gave me the impression that there is a lot of teamwork and collaboration that goes into attracting new carriers, hearing from the community, and acting upon those needs.  My second interview was downtown with the Director of the Portland U.S. Export Assistance Center.  This was probably my toughest interview, as he was presenting a less hopeful more realistic approach to the issue of shipping seafood.  He pointed out that Oregon’s issue is with critical mass.  There isn’t enough supply coming from one source to reduce costs, pointing to an economies of scale situation.  In Washington, there are bigger producers and the smaller ones go through a freight forwarder and can ship out of SeaTac (Seattle’s airport).  He was definitely a lot more intense than other people I spoke with, but I appreciated his view as someone who doesn’t necessarily have a personal stake in the issue.  I realized that up until then I had been speaking with people who have a pretty biased opinion about transporting seafood and his was probably the first objective opinion I had received, aside from my own (which is probably a little biased at this point).  My third interview was at a coffee shop in NE Portland with a NOAA inspection manager.  This was a very casual interview, but I was glad to hear from someone at NOAA about the different issues producers have brought up about the inspection procedure.  Even he had a hard time explaining the high cost of inspection and thought the idea of creating some sort of shellfish coalition sounded like it could help reduce those costs.  Overall, it was a LONG day of interview, but I felt I had received a lot of information to make my document a lot more well-informed and researched.  Also, Diego’s days off were on Wednesday and Thursday, so he was able to join me Tuesday night for the rest of my trip!

Wednesday- Early Wednesday morning, we saddled up and drove to Seattle.  Originally I was set to meet with one freight forwarder at Express NW, but that morning I received an e-mail from someone I had contacted at FedEx Cargo saying that he could meet as well.  Once we got to Seattle I gave him a call and hoped to meet before my meeting at Express NW, but as time got close and he didn’t call me back, I wasn’t sure.  Finally, he gave me a call and had spoken with someone at Express NW saying that we could have our meeting there.  That was really convenient and I was actually able to interview both men at the same time.

Diego at Pike's Place

That created a good conversation with a lot of feedback.  In speaking with them, my hope was to see how Washington is involved with Oregon’s seafood industry, but also to get their opinion on why Oregon isn’t doing as much in terms of volume.  Again, it came down to 2 major factors — lack of direct flights and lack of volume.  When I brought up the idea of creating some sort of shellfish marketing coalition to pool resources and reduce costs, both seemed receptive to the idea.  Another thought that came up in a few past interviews that I brought up here was the idea of capitalizing in products that are abundant along the coast, but not marketable in the U.S. (for example: sea cucumbers, gooey ducks, etc.).  It was good to get the perspective of other people who have no direct affiliation with Oregon’s seafood transporttion issue, but are well-versed in the industry.  After the interviews, Diego and I went down to Pike’s Place Market and grabbed some late lunch, some peaches, and some ice cream! I tried honey lavender, which was delicious.  Seattle is a really cool town and I wish we could have spent more time there.

Thursday- Thursday was left open, hoping to hear back from one more Portland contact.  While I didn’t get in touch with him, Diego and I were able to do some personal maintenance in the city before heading back to Newport.  My hair needed a trim pretty desperately and Diego’s mullet was out of hand, so we headed to a local barber shop and got some pretty swanky cuts! After lunch and a quick stop at the Goodwill, we drove back to Newport and finished the first half of my book on tape.

Overall, it was a great trip and now I have all the information I need to finish my publication.  I know everyone’s said it, but I can’t believe the program is almost over.  I was about to say summer, but I suppose that since I’ve graduated summer is kind of a loaded word.  If I don’t get a job, then I could live in an endless summer OR maybe summer really is just a season now, not a time for recharging your batteries before putting on your backpack and heading back to school…maybe I’m getting a little too introspective.  Anyways, I’m nervous about putting my work down on paper, but I hope that once I’m done assembling it, it makes sense and is helpful to those who use it.

This weekend was fun and relaxing, I picked berries with Margaret, watched a lot of movies, exercised (Oregon has inspired me to get fit!), and cooked a lot of blueberry treats (none that I’m overly proud of…the muffins were a little dense!).  This week marks the beginning of my outline and writing process, which I can barely get started on.  I feel a little overwhelmed, but I know I’ll get it done!

Also, I’m excited for Zumba with Margaret tonight..your first class at the Newport Rec. Center is free!  Gotta take advantage of all the fun stuff in Newport before we head out of here AND if you’re in Corvallis on Wednesday night you should come see Diego play a show at Bombs Away!

Sea_Gil’s Blog Pt.7

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So, we Sea Granters have only have 2 and a half weeks left of the Summer Scholar Program. It’s crazy, I can’t believe we’re almost done here.

Well, this past week I got some new books to look through. One is called Distribution and Abundance of Fishes and Invertebrates in West Coast Estuaries and the other is titled Marine & Freshwater Products Handbook. I’ve already gone through the other books and I’m about to start on the products one. Hopefully, I can find some useful information from it, if not I’ll just have to return it to the library (I’ve been getting some good use out of my temporary library card at Guin Library).

After I finish that up, I’m going to start looking through articles that my colleague, Katie, has been gathering for me. I have a feeling that I will just find data about species that I have already listed in my spreadsheet, but maybe they will have some useful information that the books didn’t have.

I’ve also started working on my powerpoint. My mentor will not be around after next week because he’ll be going on vacation to Yellowstone (lucky!). I’d like to get him a rough draft before he leaves so we can discuss how I can best present what I’ve been doing this summer. So far, it’s about 7 complete slides and about 5 more that are still in an outline stage. There’s a lot of information I have to get across in a 10-12 minute presentation so it’s important that I manage my time effectively so I can relay as much of my story as I can. I think it is important to keep in mind that, though important, my work is only a small piece in a larger project studying how climate change will affect different environments across the globe.

But enough about work, I’ll get to the fun stuff now. On Friday, Betty, Deigo, and I went clamming. We got a pretty good amount and used shovels instead of the “clam guns” (I don’t really know what they’re actually called). I think the shovel approach works better for me because I found a lot more than I usually do with the guns. Betty made some clam pasta with our findings. I tried some and it was very good! 

On Saturday, Betty and I went blueberry picking at a place right outside of Corvallis. I thought I was going to turn into a blueberry like Violet from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory because I ate so many blueberries that day. They were so good! I ended up picking about 4 ¼ pounds and paid $5.50 for them, which I think was a pretty good deal. We then hung out in Corvallis for a little bit. I got two books from this cool store that sold them for about a half of the normal price. Betty brought some lavender from a store called Cat’s Meow and used some for a blueberry crisp. Yum yum!

Blueberries!

Yesterday, I just relaxed and went for a walk on the jetty out towards the beach. The beach ended up being a bit too chilly for what I was wearing so I didn’t get to walk on the beach for as long as I had originally wanted to. Oh well. At least it was nice and sunny out!

Oh, and I’m going to try out a Zumba class at the Newport Rec Center later. Hopefully that’ll be a fun workout!